


Demons and Queens

by Come_BackToMe



Series: When my time comes around [2]
Category: Daybreak (TV)
Genre: A whole lot of love for Mona Lisa, Aftermath, Attempting at something resembling a plot, But mainly an excuse to love Mona and Sam, F/F, Ghoulies, Season 1 Spoilers, Swearing
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-24
Updated: 2019-11-24
Packaged: 2021-03-03 01:29:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,261
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21548314
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Come_BackToMe/pseuds/Come_BackToMe
Summary: Contrary to popular belief, and a whole lot of nasty-ass rumours, Mona Lisa doesn’t feel any real loyalty to Sam Dean when the blonde takes her throne.
Relationships: Sam Dean/Mona Lisa, Wesley Fists/Turbo Bro Jock
Series: When my time comes around [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1552114
Comments: 4
Kudos: 36





	Demons and Queens

Contrary to popular belief, and a whole lot of nasty-ass rumours, Mona Lisa doesn’t feel any real loyalty to Sam Dean when the blonde takes her throne.

It’s a power gamble that Mona takes, the best of a lacklustre bunch, and her only thought, as they stand there in front of the burning wreckage and the Jocks are rallying with their usual brain dead vigour, is that she doubts this new ruler will last.

Sam doesn’t seem to be one of those girls that knows the difference between an idle fantasy, a temptation, a desire. Whether she’s truly prepared for what it takes to draw in the fear of her subjects and lash it around her like armour? Mona isn’t quite sure.

The girls pretty in the way a kitten might be, but Mona doesn’t need a fluffy nightmare that gets tangled around her feet. She needs something that can sink it’s claws into the flesh of her palm and draw blood when the occasion calls.

A little known fact about the Jocks, their hierarchy, is that there’s never been a true leader, a person willing to make all of the moves on a chessboard. The Jocks need an iron first, a sharp heel to grind themselves under and then they need a salve, a distraction, an electric current to jolt their sorry asses into gear.

American ninja idol is not her proudest creation, but Mona still stands by it’s effectiveness.

Turbo was perfect for the grand gestures, the displays that held all of the tribes in his fist, however she was his enforcer, the mobiliser of boys and girls and everyone in between, the only one willing to pull the idiot out of his love sick mind and focus him on the important things.

She made a boy into a king, however shortly that lasted.

Mona’s certain that she can morph Sam Dean into a queen.

So while the Jocks hoorah and the Daybreakers snotty faces are still damp from the ‘betrayal’ of their pasty leaders girl, Mona watches them all with an abundance of disdain and starts to plot.

\-----

_You don’t know who I am_.

There’s probably never been truer words said, and Mona fixates on them as they return home, tries to reconcile the girl that spent hours cultivating her sunflowers and beaming in delight at the first batch of fruit that didn't run for the hills, with the sickle wielding ruler that mounted the truck bed and commanded the kids in front of her with just a look.

_You don’t know who I am._

They could all say that, Mona doubts that anybody here could know half the labels she would have fixed to herself. Daughter, sister, A grade student, wand carrying Potter nerd (in the privacy of her bedroom), an ASL novice because once she’d looked at Victoria from afar and thought _huh _and then committed to learning because it was damn interesting.

See, this is the difference between her and Sam Dean… Mona doesn’t need the fanfare of everybody knowing who the fuck she is. She can cherish those private pieces of herself and don a whole new outfit to deal with the masses.

“What do you think?” Sam asks her when they walk into what’s left of their broken home.

Mona looks around the school with a dismay that never reaches her face, the tightening of her jaw unavoidable. _I think we should burn it to the ground and never return._

She shrugs.

Sam Dean sighs as if her silence is offensive. “I suppose we’d better rebuild.”

That’s some Independence Day bullshit and maybe she would have pointed it for a joke if her momma was here, but she’s not so Mona pulls together a sneer. “And then?”

“And then,” Sam smiles, bitter and cold and with too much teeth to be pretty, “we decide whether we play nice or we take Glendale for ourselves.”

Mona is a little dismayed to find a fizzing, frothing, burning sensation snag in her belly and recognises that she may be in a whole different level of trouble when Sam’s keen eyes focus on her.

“Are you with me, my consigliere?”

“Lead the way.”

\-----

One night, a few weeks after the Boom, but before the lines were forged in the ground between them all and Turbo was only just beginning to cement his place as their de facto leader, a kid from the year below made the mistake of asking what her real name was as they gathered around together after a night of clearing out ghoulies from the athletics tracks.

There’d been a pause, anticipation pulling taut like a bowstring in her chest and then like with anything the tide of conversation moved on.

It isn’t a thing that Mona thinks about, she’s given plenty of fake names at this point, covers and shadows and nobody ever remembered the truth anyway so far be it from Mona to give it to them for free.

Now and then she reminisces on family like anyone else might but unlike the others there’s never the false flag of hope fluttering defiantly against the odds. In a way it makes her lucky, she knows for a fact what happened to them, a holiday that she refused to join because caravanning around sodden England is it's own kind of hell.

And here is where she snags on those memories, the footage stuttering around her baby brother, his fat cheeks round and flushed from teething and this is why Mona doesn’t think about them because there’s never going to be a chance he lived, and if she dares to unlock the darker thoughts about how he’ll won't ever have a proper grave it might crack open her brain and leave her ruined.

So that’s why when she allows the bi-weekly hour to linger on the past, thinks of the rich smell of eggs in the pan, pancakes stacked with honey and syrup, Cody’s laughter when she swings him around in the air like a spaceship, her momma’s half-baked scolding when she used to glare in every family photograph while her daddy ruffled her hair and pulled faces to make her laugh.

These are nice things, treasures that get pulled out of the box and played with before being carefully packed away again.

It also means that she never ends up like some of the sad-sacks crying in plain sight. Mona won’t ever give them the satisfaction of seeing her crumble.

There was a book she’d read last summer, solely for the fact that the narrator had been a girl like herself, unapologetic in her skin and fiercely loyal to those she loved. Ignoring the ‘shamblers’ - a stupid name for the dead (Ghoulies wouldn’t have been her first choice) - there was a lesson to be learnt that Mona’s still uses when it best suits her: Sometimes you have to play down to peoples expectations.

It’s not to say that she’s the type of bitch to whine about having _hidden depths_, it’s just that she’s… _Oh_, no way in hell is Mona calling herself complicated. That’s ‘I’m not like other girls’ Mary-Sue levels of pathetic.

Mona Lisa started out as a joke, a moniker that she owned after the Boom when she stood side by side with Wesley Fists of all people beating back the freshly turned ghoulies with a broken piece of ply wood, one hand helping drag a charred Turbo across the pitch.

Old identities no longer matter, she’s Mona Lisa, she becomes the epitome of every stereotype middle aged rich fucks used to level at her, because unlike them she’s still alive and Mona’s going to keep it that way.

\-----

Despite her proclamation, Sam lives up to her leadership role with a remarkably calm façade. She delegates and dictates and brings the tribes back under the Jocks control with nary more than a smile and handshake.

The school’s still under repair, but instead of firing a flare of warning, they get volunteers, aid from those that before chafed at the rules. Mona finds that she’s got less to do than the very beginning and she’s more than a little indignant about it.

“What happened to your plan?” She demands when they return from the mall, for a split second she’d almost fist pumped in delight when Turbo’s boot cut the brats circulation off. "Why the fuck are we playing nice?"

Sam hums to herself, does a little twirl as she directs two of Mona’s best to drag the kid away, his pathetic excuses tripping off of his tongue. “Tell me something, would you attack now?”

Mona doesn’t have to give it any thought, she’s plotted this enough times already. “No.”

“Why?”

“They have Crumble, Green and Cardashyan for a start.”

“Turbo?”

“As long as Wesley Fists is safe he’s useless.”

Sam contemplates her with what seems like genuine curiosity as they walk into the classroom converted into a makeshift council room and Sam's quarters. “And why are the other three a problem?”

It feels like a test and Mona’s always been good at those, she pops a finger up for each point as she recites the information like an amateur legal aid. “Crumble’s like Burr, we have no idea what else she can do other than ‘mist’. Cardashyan held that shitty mall for six months, none of my boys could crack into it without jittering about from the volts he sent up their asses. Green’s been hoarding incendiary devices since before day one and the Cheermazon’s announced that she had an oath of protection so that’s another set of allies.”

“See my problem, we have the numbers, they have the talent.”

Mona bristles at the slight. “We have the best fighters.”

Sam considers this and still shakes her head, hair bouncing in somehow perfect curls. “They’re a load of pawns, I need _special_ people, those that have some use. The only one I can rely on is you.”

It’s an offhand comment as the blonde goes back to examining the patrol rota’s and still Mona’s pitiful excuse for a heart thumps heavy and hard at it. “The tribe’s getting restless.”

“Of course they are, we armed a bunch of kids and then gave them no direction other than to fight some mindless ghoulies, no wonder why they’re chomping to get on with it.” Sam reaches into the old teachers desk and pulling out a bottle of raspberry plonk and pours out two glasses before sliding one across.

Mona takes it, squashes the sequence of memories, momma’s laughter at her wrinkled nose as she sipped a fingers worth at thanksgiving, and takes a long pull. “Don’t make the same mistakes as Turbo Sam. I can run them into the dirt every day but it doesn't make a difference if they think they can do what they like.”

“Advice heeded, they’ll have some entertainment tonight.” Sam promises.

\-----

American Ninja Idol is back on. The shitbird that appeared so smug tanking into Just Josh looks decidedly less brave when the trapdoors shake under his feet.

Sam doesn’t watch him, she stares at the energised crowd, the fear pinched faces of those on spike duty, then finally to Mona, lips quirking at the corners.

“Happy now?”

Mona is, but she still rolls her eyes before standing up to deliver the verdict.

\-----

The difference between then and now is that Sam likes to follow Mona as she does her rounds through the streets, and although it’s not precisely a hardship to have the girl that faced down Burr alone watching her back, it also means that Mona has a lot less chances to scavenge.

For a while she had let a certain portion of her brain stagnate behind the monotonous routine of the Jocks. Shouting and killing aside there’s never been a time when she let her intellectual development become stunted like this and once she’d settled the tribe into something resembling order, the first stop on Mona’s list had been to the nearest library.

Which, like all the good and beautiful things in Glendale, was a smouldering wreck when she came across it.

This is why Mona Lisa, second in the most powerful tribe in the city, is rummaging about an abandoned apartment block for _anything_ that’ll take the dull edge off of her senses. Her companion is only there because there’s no other option and Mona isn’t willing to let herself become a simpleton to keep her secret from the blonde.

“What are we looking for again?” Sam didn’t complain at the staircase Ghoulies that burst out without warning on the sixth floor, but she seems to have had enough of skulking through peoples apartments with a rucksack.

“For the thousandth fucking time, I’ll know when I see it.” Mona explains as she roundhouses the eleventh door of the trip.

There’s a large stack of porn magazines displayed proudly on the bookcase directly across from the entrance, the covers cracked with well loved use. _Uncultured fucks_. Mona and Sam step back in silent agreement and move on to the next.

“Y’know if you told me what you wanted then I’d be able to help?” For all the things that Mona’s been observing about the girl, she never shies away from hard work, helps lug an upturned dresser from blocking the stairwell - a terrified attempt at stopping the Ghoulies?

“Maybe I don’t think that you need to know everything.”

Sam’s quiet after that, for some reason sticks by her side as they traverse through the building until, at the very fucking top, Mona hits the jackpot.

“Bingo,” she whistles, low and yet still loud enough Sam’s has to pop up in her peripheral.

“Books?” She picks up a paperback and wipes a hand over the cover to clear half a years worth of dust and grime. “That’s what you wanted?”

“Try not to sound so surprised.” Mona doesn’t have the time to dedicate any degree of exasperation to the girl, occupied by divvying up the novels into piles of desperately needing and not quite there’s.

“I’m not.” Sam’s entire face softens when Mona grabs the book she’s holding and adds it to the highest priority. “I’m just surprised that you like Jemisin.”

Okay, for this Mona lets herself get offended on behalf of good literature everywhere. “The Broken Earth trilogy is some of the best writing that a pens ever put to paper Sam Dean.”

“You’re totally right. I’m a travesty to good taste everywhere.” Sam nods, adopts a serious expression, lips trembling with mirth and Mona realises that she’s being teased. It’s strange and new and rather nice.

“You’ve read them haven’t you?”

“Essun’s my favourite character.” Sam confesses, staring at the book with a wistful expression.

Mona feels a little off kilter with this similarity, the line in the sand between them feels smeared and faded. “Alabastor’s better.”

“Snap,” Sam laughs, “can’t agree on yet another thing.”

They pack not only Mona’s pack but Sam hunts through the rooms before finding an old sports bag and fills it to the brim.

“You’re never going to be able to carry all of that.” Mona points out, even though she’s also disappointed at the limitations of her own strength.

“I’ve got the arms of a god I’ll have you know my friend.”

They make it halfway down the stairs before the blonde concedes with a flustered face and discards the John Grisham collection, because really, as Mona points out to her disappointed leader, once you’ve read one mediocre mystery then you’ve read them all.

\-----

It’s a plan that for once Mona is in full agreement with Sam about, it’s only the timing and the fact that she’s twenty feet off of the ground with only the spikes her suddenly ginormous feet are standing on preventing her brains from spilling out onto the tarmac.

“Careful.” Sam quietly calls up.

“Get fucked, Dean.” Mona groans and fiddles with another series of wires.

The speakers a _really_ good idea, a beacon that they can utilise for a distraction if the ghoulies get too close, a series of them scattered through Glendale and Mona would be impressed with the STEM punks suggestion if the pathetic shits hadn’t ducked out of actually implementing the plan. Plus the fact that the shitty Daybreakers _did_ do it first.

Knowing full well that only a select few speakers needed manual overriding and Sam - the only willing volunteer - couldn’t exactly take such a risk, Mona’s up here trying to make magic happen in the haze of nightfall.

It’s the last one and she sure as hell isn’t about to give up just because the fucker refuses to work.

“Please don’t die,” Sam ignores her cussing, “it’ll be so hard to find another decent second, let alone a pretty one.”

Mona’s about to spit back down that this is least amount of help she’s ever had when something whistles in her ears, an instinctive rush has her locking her muscles around the sports pole, as something in the distance blasts loud enough to echo through most of Glendale.

“Did you hear that?” Sam whisper-shouts from the ground. "It came near the 4H clubs borders."

“No, why wouldn’t I hear a fucking explosion!” Mona shifts to steady her footing, biceps straining under the weight of her not so small body.

Sam’s expression shifts into it’s _let me fuck Mona’s life up_ phase and Mona can barely draw together a refusal when the blonde’s dashing up the street. “One of our patrols are out that way.”

Mona cusses up a storm so foul that her momma would have shoved a bar of Dove down her neck, rams the speakers panel shut, flips the switch and sighs in relief when the bastard works.

There’s a howling noise that isn’t human and Mona all but flies back down to street level, scoops up her hockey stick and lunges after her stupid fucking leader. Another guttural sound fuels her feet into moving faster, arms pumping in tandem, and it’s a testament to the track teams advice that her lungs work harder without dragging her down as she passes street after street without breaking into more than a light sweat-

Mona skitters around the corner and almost blasts into the creature.

The Beagle’s droopy ears flop about in it’s excitement and in the dark Mona can’t make out the muscle mass, whether it’s got the standard number of teeth because you can never be too careful these days (it could have a prehensile tail for all she knows.)

Then Mona makes out the distorted shapes on the ground, four, maybe five bodies littered at it’s feet like trash and…

Sam wouldn’t have stood a chance against this thing, not if she didn't have time to pull her sickle.

For a cowardly, treacherous moment Mona stumbles back as the Beagle scents the air, it’s gaze settling on new prey, and her mind begins a terrified justification for turning around and bolting away.

But…

That’s not who she is, that was the old version of a corrupted virus, a shell of the women she is now, the type of human that would have given up on ever seeing her family again. It would be simple to shrug back into that old coat, tuck her arms into it’s familiar sleeves and retract back to a time when the closest thing to adventure she had was a battered paperback devoured with an obligatory box of chocolates.

God, it would be so easy, and for a second her feet twist on the spot, legs priming to launch away from that grotesque mouth as globules of drool fall in ropey lengths, it’s head raised high and a square foot above her decidedly lacking stature.

_Fuck that._

She’s Mona-Fucking-Lisa, a second, a consigliere, _a friend_, and no way in hell will she leave Sam Deans corpse there to get eaten by a dog.

And thus begins an emotional ramp up that starts in the murky realms of terror, trundles through horror, picks up speed with pinpoint sparks of fury, and ends somewhere on the other side of a blazing, incandescent mania. Her body moves on auto pilot, swings the hockey stick around until the end cracks off of the concrete and leaves her with a rudimentary spear, and when the Beagle launches itself into the air Mona does something that only ever works in the films.

She makes a choked off battle cry, bursts forward, slides down onto her knees and rolls under the massive body, fire blooming in her chest before plunging the spear into it’s tender belly, making it clear by only a scant few inches as it collapses to the ground with an anti-climatic wheeze.

“Shit.” She breathes, gasps around a bubble of air and tries to stop her hands from shaking. “Holy shit.”

A groan brings Mona back to the present and she’s stumbling through the pool of blood until she reaches the pile. Fear seeds itself in her gut, a dark vibration that amplifies with each glitter coated body she turns over, her concious mind screaming at itself as she yanks them aside one by one until all five of them stare blankly up at the stars.

A primal chill works it’s way up her spine until each vertebra pops under the strain as Mona faces the possibility that there may not be any pieces of Sam Dean left for her to find. It takes her far too long to differentiate between the blood cascading in a broken sympathy through her eardrums and footsteps approaching from behind.

“Mona,” Sam Dean skids into view, a superficial wound at her temple, smalls beads of blood welling up and for some reason Mona looks at this first, a methodical analysis while her heart tries to slow the fuck down.

"Where..."

"I managed to sneak past it, and found these idiots... You’re bleeding.” Sam looks like she’s been exsanguinated, skin translucent, eyes wild, but she’s _alive_.

Mona can’t remember the last time she felt a crack of relief like this, shotgun sharp and omnipotent in it’s power to shake her knees until they knock together. There’s a group of kids behind the blonde, the last of the patrol? Mona can’t get her shit together enough to peer through the blurry filter that’s obscuring her vision.

“Bloody hell, Mona, your shoulder!"

“It’s fine.” She’s about to reach out and grab the insufferable bitch and pull her into her arms when there’s a nauseating pull at her shoulder and instead the energy’s wasted on probing at the…

Oh that’s a claw, embedded in her shoulder, probably why it’s starting to _burn._

“Mona-”

In a manner that’s entirely too theatrical for Mona’s liking, she barks out an hysterical noise before falling to the ground and sinking into the black.

\-----

“I’ll send someone else to deal with them.”

Sam tries to pull rank and it’s a little bit adorable.

Mona, of course, is ignoring her.

“You’re lucky that I’m not sending every sucka out there to burn that shithole to the ground.”

Sam’s mouth tightens, lips pursing in her frustration. “I’m not going to start a war when we were technically in the wrong. Our guys were the one that moved first, even they’re admitting it.”

That confession is something that Mona would have liked to have seen extracted if the _dark_ look on the blonde’s face is anything to go by. That and it seems nobodies heard about her performance and given the tendencies of the idiots to gossip, whatever Sam did must have been magnificent. Instead Mona has to settle for cautiously pulling her boots on and trying to summon the willpower to bend forward to do up her laces.

“Did you know that everyone’s calling you a demon?”

Sam crouches down, kneeling like a monarch never should, and lifts her foot up, fingers carefully cradling her calf and Mona stares in disbelief as she laces each boot up with a firm, steady touch. It’s embarrassing that she has to shake herself before remembering to speak.

“Why?”

“You’re the first one we know of that killed one of the mutant dogs, nearly everyone’s talking about it.”

So that much ran through the gossip mill, Mona wouldn’t be surprised if Sam let it out in deliberate snippets to boost morale. Mona decides that of all the names she's been called this may be her favourite one yet.

“See, this is precisely why I have to go. The Daybreakers won’t accept any old messenger after two days, and if you really don’t want to start a fight-”

“Yet.”

“- yet. Then you need to let it look like we’re playing the game. It’ll make a point if I go. Though you do know that if Turbo was there then he’s technically a nomad.”

Sam sits back on her haunches likes it perfectly normal to lower herself down to this level. “Josh will claim him, he knows that Wesley’s going to stick by his man from now on.”

“Love.” Mona sighs, disgusted by the emotion that took away a perfectly good leader and left him so very weak.

“May it never plague you my dear consigliere.” Sam’s canines flash in the flickering overhead light.

For some reason that bothers Mona more than she’d like, all the while she steadily plods across town, stopping off at an old pharmacy to steal something strong enough to numb her lead heavy muscles. In the end she shakes it off as the mall comes into sight, determined not to linger on the age old question of the heart.

**Author's Note:**

> Am I now obsessed with writing for as many ships as possible for this show? 10000000000000% Yes!  
Am I already daring to try and write something from Eli's POV? Terrifyingly so.


End file.
